Philip Gefter

Even with such abundant material - the play, the movie, the playwright, the director (first film ever, second was The Graduate), and the stars - there's no guarantee that a thorough examination of a 1962 play and a 1966 movie, each with a debut over sixty years ago, would be of interest to anyone but boomers. Which is why I urge anyone who loves theatre and film to grab this one. I DEVOURED IT. From Edward Albee's miserable life as a neglected adoptee; to director Mike Nichols, insecure despite his brilliance as a comedy partner with Elaine May; and especially to Ernest Lehman, the film producer whose strong hand and daily journaling provide the critical details. And then there are Elizabeth and Richard a/k/a Martha and George - she, tagged as the beauty with no particular talent; he, obsessed with childhood acne scars and his rivalries with Gielgud, Richardson, Olivier - their third movie since exploding their marriages and their bold decision to risk their reputations - everyone's reputations. The reader cannot help but cheer the film’s towering success and to give Edward Albee the biggest accolades for writing such a magnificent theatrical experience, and to commend the author, Philip Gefter, for creating such an absorbing journey, from the dying late ‘50s to the raging late '60s, especially for women who went from reading Betty Friedan and "the problem that has no name", to recognizing the damage caused by the prevailing patriarchy and rallying for dynamic change.

Quotes: "There was a chasm in the cultural life of America. There tended to be only one predominant public conversation, and it was calibrated to a narrow frequency of white middle-class Babbitry. Yet there were plenty of educated people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds starved for reflections of themselves in a more honest and intelligent social dialogue about actual human experience."

"While theatre relies on the voice, the screen relies on the face. On the screen, film magnifies a face as if it were an entire stage; the infinitesimal adjustments in a facial expression can have the same narrative impact as a character's soliloquy in a play."… (mere)